The New Breadmakers (5 page)

‘Don’t be daft. You can’t even be in your thirties yet.’

‘There’ll always be a bit of wean in wee blondie.’ Madge jerked her head towards Catriona. ‘Talk about luck.’

‘Oh yes, my life of Riley again! My big house and my television set and my washing machine and my telephone, not to mention my saintly husband.’

‘I was thinking about the way you’ve never been lumbered by a mob of weans. See them weans of mine? I could murder them at times, so I could.’

She shoved her red beret further back on her head. ‘See all my grey hairs? That’s worrying about them weans, so it is.’

Julie tucked her powder compact back into her handbag and took a last sip of tea. ‘I’d better go. See you.’

‘Not if I see you first, hen,’ Madge laughed.

‘Aye, right.’

She waved them goodbye and clipped away on her black, high-heeled court shoes. She knew she looked smarter than her two friends, in her black tailored costume and pristine white blouse. The knowledge gave her spirits a triumphant lift. She believed in keeping up appearances and had always succeeded in putting on a brave front. But her triumph was short-lived and her bravery superficial. Alone in bed at night, she often suffered tornadoes of grief and regret. She wept. Sometimes she’d give up trying to sleep and get up, make herself a cup of tea and sit nursing it on the fender stool close to the dying embers of the fire.

Her hole-in-the-wall bed in the kitchen was cosier than the one in the front room. The front room was always cold as the North Pole. Sometimes she didn’t bother lighting the gas mantle in the kitchen. She just crouched underneath it, watching the feeble light from the black iron grate flicker around the cramped room. It picked out the ghostly form of the scrubbed table, the wooden chairs, the high shelf on which sat her best china and two china dogs, or ‘wally dugs’, as they were known to most Glaswegians.

The light made grey shadows of the sink and the swan-necked tap under the window and, when she filled the kettle, she could gaze out on to the back court with its overflowing midden and the occasional darting of rats. It was the front room that had the view of the street below. The street was always full of interesting, lively bustle during the day and, on long summer evenings, she liked to sit there watching Glasgow life go by. At weekends, she sometimes went out to visit friends or with one or two of the girls at work to the cinema. It depended if there was a good picture on, or if the other girls weren’t going out with boyfriends. A date with a man always took precedence. She’d once gone to the dancing in the Barrowlands Ballroom with Flora. Flora had been stood up by a bloke and, at the last minute, had persuaded Julie to go to the Barrowlands as a kind of ‘I don’t care’ gesture of defiance.

Flora had insisted she preferred a girlfriend’s company any day. She was lying, of course, and the disaster of an evening hadn’t been helped by the manager ordering them off the floor for dancing together.

The older women who got married always left work to concentrate on the care of home, husband and eventually children. As a result, Julie either had to go out with younger women or fall back on her real friends, Madge and Catriona. They had stood by her through thick and thin for years and she was grateful to them, although pride had always prevented her from showing her feelings.

It had been true what she’d said to them about her wee girl. She just wanted the best for her – always had done. Yet, at the same time, she longed to find her, to see her. She told herself it was just to make sure she was all right. But, oh, in her heart, she knew it was more than that. She felt again the agonising wrench when the nurse came and took the baby away. She suffered the acute pain as if it had happened only yesterday.

And she wanted her back.

‘What’s my bloody school got to do with it?’ Dermot O’Donnel jerked out his cleft chin.

‘Don’t you dare swear at me, you ignorant, impertinent lout,’ Melvin said. ‘I have no intention of giving the likes of you a job in here.’

‘The likes of me being a Catholic, you mean, and having proved it by going to St Joseph’s school?’

‘It’s nothing to do with your religion.’

‘Think I sailed up the Clyde in a banana boat?’ Dermot sneered. ‘If I’d said Bearsden Academy or even the worst Protestant school in Glasgow, you would have taken me.’

‘No, I would not. Now, I’m busy and I’ve other men to see, so away you go and stop wasting my time.’

Dermot, who had hoped against the odds to join McNair’s as a trainee baker, strode out of McNair’s office at the back and pushed his way roughly through the crowd of customers in the front shop. His cap was jerked down, his mouth was a tight twist and his fists were clenched. He was furious. He burst into the Balornock flat, that was home to his mother, father, younger brother and two sisters, and crashed down into a chair.

Sean said, ‘You didn’t get it, then?’

‘Bloody Orange bigot! Just because I went to St Joseph’s.’

‘He’d know you kicked with your left foot without needing to know what school you went to,’ Sean grinned. ‘Dermot O’Donnel isn’t usually a Protestant name.’

‘I bet he’s a regular at the local Orange Lodge. Up at the front of every Orange Walk, with his bloody bowler hat crammed on his fat head.’

Sean fell silent and serious, remembering. It was at times like these that his brother Dermot could absolutely terrify him. Dermot seemed to thrive on trouble and, if there was no fighting going on, he made it happen by his suicidal (as it seemed to Sean) provocation. At every Orange Walk, one of the most fiercely kept rules was that no one was allowed to break the flow of marchers by crossing a road that they were marching along. He had been out with Dermot once and had stopped at the pavement’s edge to wait until a Walk passed before crossing the road. To his horror, Dermot began pushing his way through one of the flute bands to cross to the other side. He was lucky not to have been torn to shreds. The nearest sashed, bowler-hatted men hadn’t seemed to notice. Maybe they were too full of themselves, strutting along, puffed up with pride. Or maybe it was because most of those nearest to the flute band were middle-aged or elderly and Dermot looked like an aggressive young bull, that most of them ignored him. Anyway, miraculously, no fight had resulted from that incident.

There had been plenty of other occasions when Dermot had got his way and there had been a barney. At only twenty, his reputation as a fighter was so well known that guys sometimes even came to the door actually wanting a fight, in order to prove themselves or enhance their reputations as hard men. Of course, they never managed to win. Dermot was one of Glasgow’s top hard men and head of the Balornock Boys, a local gang who occasionally had vicious street fights with the Springburn Savages. He’d once taken on three of them at once. They’d come ‘to teach Dermot a lesson’. Dermot had felled each one of them in a matter of seconds.

‘Bloody cheek, coming up here,’ he’d said afterwards, smacking his fists together and hitching up his shoulders. He’d obviously enjoyed himself. Sean couldn’t understand it. Give him a good book any time.

Even at school in Balornock, Dermot, with his cropped bullet head, thick neck and wide-legged stance, had invited trouble – although, before long, nobody in the school would risk taking him on. Sean had been grateful that it had saved him from being bullied. As the brother of Dermot O’Donnel, nobody dared touch him.

But, since leaving school, he just wished Dermot would calm down, maybe meet some nice girl and get married. Personally, he’d wanted to go on to university, but his parents dismissed the idea and told him to stop being such a useless dreamer, get off his backside, get a job and start making some money. Well, he’d got a job in McHendry’s office, thanks to Alec Jackson and Alec’s pal, Sammy Hunter, who both put a good word in for him. The rest of his family weren’t so extreme as Dermot and didn’t mind him being helped by two Protestants and working for a Protestant company. Especially his sister, Ailish. She shared Sean’s interest in books and they often had long talks about different stories they’d read. Although she just read novels, he had become more adventurous and had tackled a few biographies of famous men and even a couple of books on psychology. He knew about Freud and Jung and he was interested in what made people tick. But he still couldn’t understand why Dermot was the way he was.

Well, maybe that wasn’t quite true. Michael, his father, was heavily built and could get quite aggressive at times. Dermot had probably taken after him. Michael certainly had some strong views about religion and he often argued with ‘Proddies’ as he called them. Never with Alec Jackson or Sammy Hunter, though. Alec was too easy-going and Sammy was a Quaker so nobody knew what to make of him. The McKechnies were Jehovah’s Witnesses and wouldn’t listen to anybody about anything.

Why, Sean kept wondering, didn’t he and at least one of his sisters – coming from the same parents and having had the same upbringing – not turn out like Dermot? To be fair though, behind all the terrible aggression and hatred of Proddies, especially Rangers supporters, Dermot was a generous guy. If he was your friend (or your brother), he would do anything for you, give you his last halfpenny. If only, Sean kept thinking to himself, praying to himself, if only Dermot would stop being so desperate for confrontation. To go anywhere with him was like teetering on the edge of a dangerous precipice. He’d had a few girlfriends who had no doubt been attracted by his rock-like features and hard, muscular body, but soon enough they all got fed up when they found that half the time they didn’t get the peace to enjoy a night at the dancing or the cinema with him. Too often, there was some violent and unwelcome distraction in which Dermot was the centre of attention.

Now, of course, he was unemployed and couldn’t afford to take a girl anywhere.

‘I could speak to Sammy Hunter and maybe he would put a good word in for you. Or better still, Alec Jackson. There might not be any vacancies just now, but if they know your name …’

They knew his name all right. Who didn’t? That was the trouble.

‘You might be quite happy to work for a Proddy firm, Sean, but not me. I’ve had enough of them.’

‘What do you mean, you’ve had enough of them? You haven’t worked for any of them.’

‘If Melvin McNair is anything to go by …’

‘He isn’t.’

‘He’s a right shit.’

‘The boss of McHendry’s isn’t like that. I know, I work there, remember.’

‘Aye, just as a favour to Sammy Hunter because he’s in with the bricks. What do you bet they ask any other guy who applies for a job what school he went to? They all do.’

‘You’ll never get another job if you take that attitude.’

‘It’s the bosses have the attitude. Proddy bastards!’

‘Och, for goodness’ sake!’ Sean gave up. Dermot was hopeless. There was no budging him.

Ailish had been sitting nearby reading a book and she shook her head in sympathy with Sean.

‘What’s up with you?’ she asked Dermot. ‘Why can’t you just relax?’

‘Oh, aye, you’re all right,’ Dermot said, his aggression fizzling out. He was more of a soft touch with his sisters. ‘You in your posh Copeland & Lye’s.’

‘Yes, and I haven’t a clue what their religion is and I don’t care.’

After a moment’s pause, Dermot said, ‘Will they be needing any storemen there, I wonder? Or van drivers?’

In his last job at the garage, he’d learned to drive. He’d been getting on fine and was a good worker. But then he’d got into a fight with a customer and, as a result, he’d been fired.

Ailish looked worried. ‘I don’t know. But I’ll keep my ear to the ground and try and find out.’

‘Thanks, hen.’

Sean knew what Ailish was feeling. She wanted to help Dermot the same as he did, but she was worried about the consequences. Dermot was a magnet for trouble, even without the Balornock Boys. He wasn’t the type to fit into Copeland & Lye’s in any capacity. Dermot would look more at home in one of Glasgow’s toughest bars than in one of the city’s most genteel and upper-class shops.

Now there was a thought. ‘Here, how about being a barman, Dermot? I bet any bar would jump at the chance of having you there to keep order in the place. Well, maybe not
any
bar,’ he corrected himself, then laughed. ‘Forget the Rangers bars, but how about a good Celtic one?’

Dermot’s craggy face immediately lit up with hope.

‘What a bloody good idea! I’ll give that a try. You’re the one with the brains, right enough, Sean. No doubt about it.’

‘Aye, sure.’ Sean laughed along with his brother, feeling really pleased that he’d been able to help him.

Ailish said, after Dermot had gone whistling cheerily out of the room, ‘That really was a brilliant idea, Sean. I’m sure he’ll get taken on. Then, once he’s earning again and in a steady job, he’ll stop getting mixed up in these horrible gang wars, meet some nice girl and get married and settle down and have a family. Then he’ll be fine.’

‘Hang on! You and your imagination. You should be writing stories.’

‘But it could happen, and it’s what Dermot needs. If he had a home of his own …’

‘I know. I know. But let’s just keep our fingers crossed and hope for the best at the moment.’

‘And pray.’ Ailish was one of the least bigoted members of the family and the most sincerely religious. She had a picture of the Holy Mother above her bed and often she could be seen fingering her rosary beads and muttering her prayers. She tried to perform her devotions in private but it was a bit difficult when she had to share a small bedroom with her much bigger, much noisier sister Jessie.

Like Dermot, Jessie took after their father. At eighteen, she was hefty like Michael and Dermot, but neither father’s nor daughter’s flesh was as hard and muscular as Dermot’s. Jessie was just fat. Their mother had a painfully thin body, thin grey hair and a jaundiced complexion. She suffered from asthma and was constantly struggling for breath.

Sean thanked God neither he, with his black hair, nor fair-haired Ailish had inherited either of their parents’ hatred of Protestants. Especially living up the same close as Protestant families like the Jacksons and the Stoddarts, not to mention the Paters and the McKechnies. The latter two families thankfully kept themselves to themselves. The Jacksons were OK, but he could see big trouble erupting one of these days with the Stoddarts. For this reason, he dreaded occasions like the Orange Walk and Old Firm matches.